Occasional Papers eBook

men, and to be on the watch for proofs of hollowness
and selfishness in the world and in the Church.
Yet at this time, when people were hearing of his bitter
and unsparing sayings in Oxford, he was from time
to time preaching in village churches, and preaching
sermons which both his educated and his simple hearers
thought unlike those of ordinary men in their force,
reality, and earnestness. But with age and conflict
the disposition to harsh and merciless judgments strengthened
and became characteristic. This, however, should
be remembered: where he revered ho revered with
genuine and unstinted reverence; where he saw goodness
in which he believed he gave it ungrudging honour.
He had real pleasure in recognising height and purity
of character, and true intellectual force, and he maintained
his admiration when the course of things had placed
wide intervals between him and those to whom it had
been given. His early friendships, where they
could be retained, he did retain warmly and generously
even to the last; he seemed almost to draw a line
between them and other things in the world. The
truth, indeed, was that beneath that icy and often
cruel irony there was at bottom a most warm and affectionate
nature, yearning for sympathy, longing for high and
worthy objects, which, from the misfortunes especially
of his early days, never found room to expand and
unfold itself. Let him see and feel that anything
was real—­character, purpose, cause—­and
at any rate it was sure of his respect, probably of
his interest. But the doubt whether it was real
was always ready to present itself to his critical
and suspicious mind; and these doubts grew with his
years.

People have often not given Pattison credit for the
love that was in him for what was good and true; it
is not to be wondered at, but the observation has
to be made. On the other hand, a panegyrie, like
that which we reprint from the Times, sets
too high an estimate on his intellectual qualities,
and on the position which they gave him. He was
full of the passion for knowledge; he was very learned,
very acute in his judgment on what his learning brought
before him, very versatile, very shrewd, very subtle;
too full of the truth of his subject to care about
seeming to be original; but, especially in his poetical
criticisms, often full of that best kind of originality
which consists in seeing and pointing out novelty
in what is most familiar and trite. But, not
merely as a practical but as a speculative writer,
he was apt to be too much under the empire and pressure
of the one idea which at the moment occupied and interested
his mind. He could not resist it; it came to
him with exclusive and overmastering force; he did
not care to attend to what limited it or conflicted
with it. And thus, with all the force and sagacity
of his University theories, they were not always self-consistent,
and they were often one-sided and exaggerated.
He was not a leader whom men could follow, however
much they might rejoice at the blows which he might
happen to deal, sometimes unexpectedly, at things
which they disliked. And this holds of more serious
things than even University reform and reconstruction.